The Story Teller
by ScullysGone
Summary: One-shot of what life might be like for our favorite duo if Mulder was stricken with a normal, non-alien-caused disease, like dementia.


The usual - I don't own Scully, Mulder, The Great Muldini, the X files or the name Diana. I do, however, own this story and I hope no one sends me money for it. You can send me money for nothing if you want. Anyway, this was just a little blurb because I'm a bit of a sadist and I seem to enjoy ripping apart the 'happily ever after' ideas people have about MSR. I love to think about the actual possibilities of REAL WORLD endings. Try not to hate me.

As always, please review. If you have something nasty to say, go ahead and get it off your chest. I'll roll with it and I'd rather you take it out on me than someone with thinner skin.

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The tea kettle whistles on the stove. He likes the Earl Grey the best but all she has is decaf green with chamomile. He won't know the difference anyway, she thinks sadly as she pads softly to the kitchen. It's his nap time and though she knows the screaming kettle won't wake him, she hurries to stop the noise, just in case.

He sleeps harder and longer, these days than he did in the beginning, and only on the couch now. Those first few months he was afraid to fall asleep at all. He said he was afraid he would wake up and a little more of him would be gone. Every few days, when he finally collapsed from exhaustion, his sleep was riddled with tossing and whimpering and she would sit beside the bed in the rocker he gave her when William was born. She'd sing the bullfrog song, because it calmed him the quickest, and run her fingers through his hair.

He gets angry now when she touches his head. He forgets to comb his hair most days but she doesn't do it for him anymore. It makes him uncomfortable. He used to love when she played with his hair. How she would make swirling movements with her fingers. How she stood on her tip-toes to smell it when he got out of the shower. It's been a long time since that happened. Months at least.

She sighs - it's not his fault. He has no control over it. It's the mantra she lives by now, and that made the day-to-day a little easier simply because she's done the doctor thing and detached from the emotional. Being a medical doctor didn't help her in the beginning - she knew clinically what was happening to him, but that didn't do anything to ease the pain in her heart when he began to forget the important things. When he called her Diana instead of Dana, she'd pretend nothing happened for his sake but cried herself to sleep when she was alone. Now, she doesn't cry anymore.

She grabs his favorite mug, the New York Knicks one with the chip in the rim and the super-glued handle. Pouring the scalding water over the tea bag, she watches the steam rise and rummages through old memories for the right story to tell him when he wakes. It was getting harder to remember cases. She'd been telling him his stories, as he calls them, for almost six months now.

In the beginning it was an attempt to hold back the tide of dementia erasing his memories. He sat on the couch one evening and stared at the wall behind the TV, confusion and mild panic clearly displayed in the lines on his brow. When she asked what was the matter, the look on his face was heartbreaking.

"Who is Billy Miles?"

And so it began. She spent that evening, and most evenings for the last six months,. It was difficult at first. He knew he should remember the things she was telling him but he simply couldn't. He would get angry, yelling that she was getting it wrong, that the facts were skewed, even accusing her of hiding the truth from him. Those were the hardest days, watching his trust in her erode away with his memories. But things are easier now. He doesn't remember anymore. To his fading mind, the X Files are just stories.

From the kitchen, she hears him stir on the couch and hurries to finish the tea. Waking alone usually sets off a chain reaction of panic and confusion she fights fervently to avoid every night. A few times in the beginning, she'd fallen asleep across her bed only to be awakened by his frantic yelling. He hates waking alone. She doesn't fall asleep in her bed anymore.

She puts the Knicks mug on the coffee table just as his eyes opened. She gives him her small grin and a little wink, her way of keeping him alive in her mind even though the man she knew and loved has long since disappeared. He blinks a couple of times and says a shy and hollow hello.

"Hello, yourself. I brought you some tea."

He looks at her the same way every night, like he isn't sure if she is friend or foe. But something inside him says 'friend' and his shoulders ease their stiffness a bit. She's learned, through trial and error, that doing things in the same manner every time has a calming effect on him. It's like there is a part of his brain, deep inside, that tells him she's safe. So every night, she grins and winks and offers him tea. And every night he smiles back, picks up the mug with both hands and settles back on the couch, comfortable in her presence.

"Have you seen my wife? She'll be pretty pissed at me for having tea with a beautiful woman."

"You think I'm beautiful?"

"Yes. You have red hair, like my wife. I love red hair."

"Thank you."

"Sure. So, have you seen her?"

"Yes, I have. She was here but she had to run an errand. She said you like stories. Would you like me to tell you a story?"

"Oh. Um...sure, I guess so."

"Ok then. Have you ever heard of The Great Muldini?"

**The End**


End file.
